Ten Poems by Kim Seung-hee
by Kim Seung-hee Translated by Emily Jungmin Yoon June 15, 2022
The Truthful Human of Pickled Radish and Bacon
Kim Seung-hee
The Truthful Human
of Pickled Radish and Bacon
A kind person
I feel like they’re deceiving me
I want to avoid kind people
A truthful person
I feel like they’ll find me out
I’m always nervous in front of truthful people
I cannot be kind, I cannot be truthful
I’m afraid of people whose true intentions, or what’s inside them, I cannot tell
People who approach me with sincere minds, feel weighty to me, heavy as truth
People who change their minds are dangerous, so are people who don’t change their minds
Taxidermied . . . No, no, that’s all wrong
I just want to become pickled radish or bacon already
A sincere mind is so complicated and multi-dimensional
But coping with a sincere mind entails the pain of your neck snapping the whole time
If, with internal organs and uterus gutted,
All that remains of pickled radish or bacon is a quiet sincere mind,
Then a sincere mind is nothing but a lofty luxury
In other words, a betrayal of the real mind, a flower pressed down like a pig’s head
Like Freud’s Museum, the real mind is dark and basic
Behind the sincere mind always lurks the real mind
A real mind is what moves the world, not a sincere mind
I don’t even want to go there, I’m afraid of hidden real minds
A sincere mind that emerges when you snap the minds that miss the mark,
Apparently that’s called candor
At least pickled radish is yellow to its core and bacon is striped pink and white, front and back
What do I want
It has been a long time since yesterday disappeared
What do I want
The sincere mind has faded and the white current of delirium fills the fridge
What do I want
I haven’t thought beyond the pickled radish and bacon
What more, what more, what more do I want
The Truthful Human of
Pickled Radish and Bacon
(Changbi, 2021)
The Lily and the Post-it
I find out that my friend has Stage IV stomach cancer
That it has spread to the lungs, liver, lymph nodes, that surgery is impossible
In the sonogram, it looked like white lilies had bloomed in bunches
I was in bed with my lingering illness
But as soon as I heard the name of the hospital, I jumped into a taxi and rushed there
Still, I’m grateful for the doctors, they’ll try an experimental targeted therapy,
I’m crawling toward death but they’re so gently holding me up,
I don’t want to start accommodating myself to the words “what if,” but
I noticed the first-floor lobby wall was laden with yellow Post-its
Yeah, they call it the Wall of Hope
Late-stage patients post their letters to God
Why is hope a wall, not a door?
It sounds like a paradox, but the last wall of hope is the door of hope
Because I can read the yellow Post-it letters on the wall
I’m so grateful, God has forsaken me but we haven’t forsaken God
If we all don’t give up on God, maybe something could happen?
Yes, right, I’ll have to get up, I’ll get up
They say I should find meaning in the pain of loss
She has nobody, just one son, committed to a psychiatric hospital for eleven years,
And we are more afraid of living
Than dying in loneliness
I hope I don’t open my eyes tomorrow
Yes, I feel the same way
The Truthful Human of
Pickled Radish and Bacon
(Changbi, 2021)
Hall of Love
Loving is
An extraordinarily grand thing
Loving,
While living in a rented room of a grim basement hideout like the inside of a yam sack
Is grand
Like a yam that sprouts purple blossoms and bluish veins even as its insides rot
When you just split open a bright green watermelon
You see the insides of summer, brimming with colors of the trumpet flower
From the summer watermelon with its chest wide open
The fantasy of a cliff and the cool smell of water fan out
And the chill of frost and the hues of a red paradise open
But what I see below is definitely a cliff
I know it is a cliff
I came to a cliff
I’ve reached a cliff
A cliff
Though it’s a cliff
I want to move a step further
The wish to move a step further from a cliff
The Hall of Love on a cliff
It’s not a structure, it’s not romance
What love needs is just
A grand Hall of Love on a cliff
Like a rotted yam, like a summer watermelon with its chest cut open
The Truthful Human of
Pickled Radish and Bacon
(Changbi, 2021)
On Childbirth
April 2018, at New York’s MoMA
I saw a photography exhibit called My Birth by Carmen Winant
I had never seen this photographer’s work before
It was a masterpiece,
A collage of images collected and combined
By culling photos of childbirth from old magazines and books
More than two thousand birthing photos filled two walls
Pungent with the smell of blood from tearing flesh
Uncensored reality unleashed in the scene of life and death
The resolute figure of a pregnant women with a full-moon belly about to burst
The scenes of women crying into pillows and collapsing in their husband’s arms
Bodies being pulled out from between legs amidst Push! Push!
Scenes so wretched that Culture muffled them
The red face of an infant: like an old person’s, like a monkey’s
White, Black, Asian, Latino,
Faces all similar regardless of race,
Have their eyes squeezed shut
Smeared with viscous amniotic fluid and dusky red blood
Faces of disgust, frowning and furrowed with wrinkles
They have urgently whirled in the cramped, narrow birth canal
Are trembling not with claustrophobia, no, but agoraphobia
They look like pessimists,
Having to endure the looming, irremediable pains of old age, sickness, death
They’re survivors, born after slashing through another’s flesh in the war of birth
Behold, see how they wail with their fists shut tight
In this gory scene of two thousand women giving birth
Ha hoo ha hoo . . . hoo ha ha, ha hoo
It’s as if the jagged gasps of labor breathing exercises ring throughout the exhibition
It’s violent, it’s urgent, my own breath is about to stop, the sky has turned yellow and spins,
The uterine membrane rips, amniotic fluid flows,
Push, push harder, harder, harder, push!
Push harder, the baby’s head is stuck, harder, harder, harder, push!
Push! Ha hoo ha hoo . . . hoo ha ha, ha hoo
The child churns inside the belly
Thirty-five years ago, I birthed you
Grabbing my daughter’s arm, I feel like I’m about to hurl
From the labor pains of two thousand women, the sky swirling
In the hall next to Carmen Winant’s exhibit,
Monet’s water lilies—filling an entire wall,
Under limpid sunlight,
Red and white water lilies, holding all the colors and light of the world, floating
The gleam of momentary light, the silent abundance
Feeling relief as if I’ve returned to the world of gods from that of beasts
I laugh and take photos in front of the sunny water lilies with my daughter
Then walk out of MoMA utterly depleted
As if I’ve traversed the crossroads of life and death
Ha hoo ha hoo . . . hoo ha ha, ha hoo . . .
It felt as if, along with the two thousand women,
I birthed my daughter and Monet’s water lilies
The Truthful Human of
Pickled Radish and Bacon
(Changbi, 2021)
Spring, Escaping Capitalism
It’s a spring day
A horse gallops on the Gangbyeon Expressway
Staying in its lane, the horse runs well enough
Above the horse’s springing body, spring haze wavers
It’s a horse from a racetrack, I hear
A horse has escaped from a racetrack and is racing on spring
A racetrack!
An escape from capitalism
Laughter chases away stagnant air from the galloping horse’s lungs
Laughter springing forth from its belly drives the horse’s lungs
Somehow today I’m troubled by nothing
Laugh, laugh
O runaway horse from the racetrack
I’m sorry, boss, the weather is just too good today
It’s a spring day
A big car with the racetrack owner inside
Trails after the running horse
A patrol car follows, to make sure the horse isn’t hit by a car
No special violence or resistance from any one of them
Yes, you can do what you want
It’s a hazy-wavy, generous spring day
New Work by the Poet
Ultrasound Heartbeat
A dark spot in that faraway universe
Where dusky waters flow
The uterus, and its egg—
A fingernail-sized object, nestled like a black eye in the whirling current
As it grows
It will emerge in the cloudy image
A lone figure in the shape of a swimming fish, fluttering
Or listening to its own heartbeat, head bowed
You and I, we will be connected by the umbilical cord
You—can I call you “you”?
A not-me but not-other
A not-other but not-me
Such an unsettled, alien second person
How did you know to find me like this
I’m sorry
They say you can’t choose your mother’s womb or your motherland
But my heart is miserable and lowly and always dark like this
(Waves will swell five to seven meters high in seas everywhere)
I am always uneasy that I am me
I am always afraid that I am me
How can I bear it?
That happiness, not the kind that strangely overreacts
But that quiet and full love, like a tree planted streamside
Sound of heartbeats
Sound of hoofbeats running toward me from the beginning of time
Sound of drumbeats reaching forcefully from over a faraway hill
Or, the sound of a train, pressing toward me from a pitch-dark universe
Sound of plane wheels rattling as they touch ground
Not a sound of departure
It’s a sound of arrival
A sound from inside my body
From the uterus to the heart
Coming closer, closer to me, closing in on me
A sound beating into my heart
The sound of your heart
That beats right this moment
hurtles towards my heart
That beats right this moment
Two but one, one but two
Not-me but not-other
Not-other but not-me
Other but me
Me but other
An unsettling entity, second person
You
The faint yet forceful, alien second person’s
Ultrasound heartbeat
Hyundae Munhak
(January 2022)
Peony’s Time
What time
Which time
The time when the peony blooms
What time
Which time
The time when the whole world holds its breath
You don’t exist and I don’t exist
But wafts a distant peony’s breath
What time
Which time
The time when alone at night
Spasms lap against my whole body
What time
Which time
Well, this kind of time
Well, this kind of precipice
Well, this kind of lightning strike
The time when you might die
The time when you’re dying
The time when everything in the world holds its breath
And only the wiggling, solitary heart,
The peony, is left
The time when an unknown breath sneaks by like a knife
When an unknown breath sneaks in like a knife
What time
Which time
The time when the peony blooms
What time
Which time
The time when
The damn peony drops with a thud
The Truthful Human of
Pickled Radish and Bacon
(Changbi, 2021)
Freedom from Sudden Rain
There must be many types of freedom
Among them I love most
The fresh freedom of when
I cut through a shower that drenches me to my core
A handful of raindrops
A handful of air
A handful of day
What meaning does ruin have for someone who’s been ruined before
Nevertheless
Relentless rain is
Rain that makes pain anew
A new cloud creates a new rain
The endlessly repeating raindrops in Kusama’s paintings
A smile, thirst, a sob well up
To make new drops to make new clouds
No pumpkins are the same
Every day, day to day,
New rain drops newly
Each new drop pierces a new pain
No freedoms are the same
A new pain has a new weight
Once ruined
To be unreined from sudden rain is to
Simply walk into myriad rains
New Work by the Poet
Watching from the Airport
When you go to the airport and watch
Life is so simple:
Departure
Arrival
People choose one of the doors
And shuffle out
Or walk in
There’s an allure in departure
And a tingle in arrival
The cheer of air, shouted without a sound
People cutting through gravity to take off
People holding onto gravity to land
They go through all kinds of things
Live this way and that, then
Departure
Arrival
Shuffle out one door
What’s frightening about death is that heaven doesn’t issue visas
You need to be issued an arrival visa once you reach there
Since I’m not dead yet I cannot know
But I hear if you go and can’t get an arrival visa
You have to circle the transfer pathway for eternity
You have to suffer a death penalty for a long time in an infinite labyrinth
The Truthful Human of
Pickled Radish and Bacon
(Changbi, 2021)
Silent Night, Holy Night
Piercing wind, the frigid winter night
Buried in darkness, a house, where an old woman lived alone
Knock knock, came from the kitchen door leading to the backyard
The old woman, dragging her legs
With icicles popping in the joints, opened the door
A white dog, with a newborn puppy in its mouth
Gave news of its birth
To the old woman
Without realizing, the old woman kneeled and poured forward
With her two hands to cradle the puppy
Holding the puppy in her arms
The old woman walked to the front yard
Inside the doghouse, with the vinyl drapes pushed open,
Four other puppies lay, steam rising from their bodies
You did so well, you gave birth on your own
The old woman murmured,
Stroking the mother dog’s head over and over
She cooked delicious seaweed soup
And blowing on the bowl, placed it in front of the mother dog with both hands
The cluster of suckling puppies hung onto the mother’s nipples
The Truthful Human of
Pickled Radish and Bacon
(Changbi, 2021)
* All poems by Kim Seung-hee in this section have been translated by Emily Jungmin Yoon.
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